


Upside-Down

by StrangeBlueGlow (orphan_account)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/StrangeBlueGlow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On this particular day, at this particular time, in this particular spot in the city of Night Vale, the behavior of gravity was anomalous in one of the not so subtle ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upside-Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/gifts).



Few universal constants were particularly constant in Night Vale.

To the average person, the most obvious anomaly was time. The way the sun never seemed to set quite when it was meant to, how the City Council sometimes cancelled days or rearranged weeks while still somehow keeping a vague pace with everything else that allowed Night Vale to maintain some outside contact, and that wasn't even to mention the fact that none of the clocks were real. Night Vale time was, at first glance, an absolute mess.

However, after much study, it turned out that a second in Night Vale was, in fact, equal to the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, so long as that cesium 133 atom was in Night Vale. Cesium 133 atoms in Night Vale often didn't act the way Cesium 133 atoms outside the city limits did, but there was still at the very least some rule to the illogic of the situation. Even the shifting dates courtesy the City Council seemed to exist to pull Night Vale somewhat in line with the outside world.

Furthermore, Carlos was a geophysicist. Time was of course an important thing, something that worried him greatly and that he devoted study to, but slightly more related to his field was gravity.

Gravity usually worked in Night Vale, in the most general of senses. The Earth had a gravitational pull. Things that weren't meant to float off mostly stayed put. Mostly.

Beyond that, all bets were off. Gravity wasn't consistent throughout the relatively even elevation of the town, much less consistent from day to day in any particular location. It was usually subtle. Most changes weren't particularly noticeable if you weren't out to measure them with reasonably accurate equipment. Other days it was just a little feeling that something wasn't quite right, or that maybe the children across the street were jumping a little too high while playing jump rope.

Occasionally it was not so subtle.

No one other than Carlos and the other scientists seemed to really notice or care so long as the apples didn't float out of the bin at the Ralph's. And even the day that they did, no one seemed particularly put out by the event, save for little Anael Friedman who couldn't reach the particularly shiny apple she wanted, and even she was over it once Carlos had plucked the desired fruit from the floating mass for her and sent her on her way.

On this particular day, at this particular time, in this particular spot in the city of Night Vale, the behavior of gravity was anomalous in one of the not so subtle ways.

"Hello, Carlos!" Cecil grinned from his spot, floating a few feet off the floor of his apartment next to the island of the kitchenette, as Carlos let himself in, "See what I wanted to show you?"

Carlos's jaw dropped when he walked in.

Cecil had just texted him, simply asking him to come over and saying he had something to show him. It was far from the first time Cecil had sent him a near identical text of that nature, and work and city events and ordinances permitting, Carlos always came. What Cecil wanted to show him varied. Sometimes it was goo that oozed from a shared wall, or an interesting library book, or just an impossibly cute cat video. In particular fantasies, the thing that Cecil wanted to show him only himself in nothing but a tiny pair of black boxer-briefs or sometimes nothing at all. That one had yet to actually happen, but one cannot blame a man for holding out hope that it eventually would.

None of those things, however, certainly not any of the ones that had actually happened yet, were quite as surprising and fascinating as Cecil, dressed in a casual paisley polo and plaid skinny jean ensemble, floating happily in his kitchen, not unlike the cat in the station bathroom, although he was more mobile than Khoshekh, as evidenced by the way that he was able to push himself down from the ceiling and stumble out of the weightless space and back into a zone of presumably normal gravity.

"Cecil... is... is gravity not working in your kitchen?" Carlos asked. It seemed like an obvious question, but he didn't have proper instruments to confirm his observation himself, and for all he knew there was some completely reasonable - in Night Vale, anyway - explanation for why Cecil had been floating.

"Only in half of it. It's kind of annoying, really. Nothing will stay in contact with the stove. But I thought you'd be interested!" Cecil said excitedly, walking over to Carlos and greeting him with a kiss to the cheek.

Carlos returned the kiss, glancing to Cecil's stove and noting the discarded pan hovering near it, the contents of an egg similarly floating nearby. "It is... very interesting, Cecil," Carlos finally said in reply, "I wish I'd brought some instruments,  and could take some readings on this."

Cecil frowned and Carlos could hear it in his voice. "Oh, I should have told you what I wanted to show you was Science related, shouldn't've I? I'm sorry."

Sighing softly, Carlos shook his head and looked at Cecil again, wondering for a moment how he was also able to hear the capital S on "science", but quickly pushed the thought out of his mind in favor of assuring Cecil it was okay. "Don't worry about it. I don't need to quantifiably measure and run tests on everything in life, especially when I'm not working and could be spending time with you." He thought back to the time a colleague threatened to lock him out of the lab when he'd been pulling some particularly long nights because "if you don't realize some things are more important than science, you don't deserve your radio man," and took the words to heart after he showed up at Cecil's apartment by surprise with nothing else to do and Cecil nearly cried with joy at seeing him.

"I know how much you enjoy your work, though-"

Carlos cut off Cecil's whine and kissed the pout forming on his face. "You. I enjoy being with you, too," he said against Cecil's lips, pulling back and frowning as he still saw a pout there.

"But Science," Cecil tried to argue, still looking slightly upset that he'd ruined the opportunity for his boyfriend to study whatever the hell was going on in the kitchen.

It took Carlos a few moments of thinking, trying to figure out how to convince Cecil that it was okay, or find a way to study the apparent loss of gravity in half of Cecil's kitchen with what he had on him. "There's something we could do," Carlos finally said, his eyes lighting up a little as he thought of it, then immediately blushing.

He thought he was over the whole blushing and stammering and rambling thing around Cecil by now, more or less, after a few rough dates in the beginning. Things had definitely gotten better after after Cecil had taken initiative for once and invited him in. But he was suddenly hit with how dumb his suggestion was going to sound, and he didn't like saying dumb things around Cecil. The entirety of their first few dates was him saying dumb things to Cecil, and he didn't want to regress back there.

Regardless, Cecil's eyes lit up, the frown instantly turning into a smile. "Ooh! Some tests? An experiment? What is it? What do you need me to do?"

"It's not really an experiment, I mean I'm not going to get much meaningful data from it, but it's just a... thing I've wanted to try... It's dumb, forget it, Cecil."

"But Caaarlooooos..."

Three As and five Os, clear as a bell. How was Carlos supposed to resist that?

"Alright, well... you've heard of Spider-Man, right?" Carlos began, waiting for a nod before continuing. "Well... there's a scene in one of the movies or something, where he's hanging upside down from a building and he kisses his sweetheart, hanging upside down like that, and well, since I saw it, I've always kind of wanted to be kissed like that..."

He could feel heat rising in his cheeks as he spoke, knowing that the red in them was clearly visible despite his dark skin.

A quiet grin spread across Cecil's face, along with a bit of awe at how beautiful he found Carlos when he blushed. "We can do that. Just tell me what I should to do."

Carlos blinked, momentarily surprised that Cecil was going to go along with his dumb fantasy, but a smile quickly spread across his own face, leaning in to give Cecil a quick kiss before speaking. "Well, um. If I could hold onto something to stay grounded and then you could float over me somehow..."

Cecil nodded quickly, pulling Carlos into the low-gravity area of the kitchen and making him hold onto the underside of the countertop before letting go and pushing off the floor gently to cause himself to float.

Carlos's knuckles were white as he gripped the countertop, trying to compensate for his movements and stay grounded while not getting motion sick in the middle of Cecil's kitchen until he'd reached an equilibrium and was mostly still.

Meanwhile, Cecil maneuvered over him somehow, Carlos wasn't watching because looking at anything not fixed made him too nauseous, balancing with help of the light fixture and then Carlos's shoulders until he was upside down and face to face with his scientist.

They both smiled at each other for a moment, a little nervous before Cecil leaned in and pressed their lips together, gently at first before briefly sucking at Carlos's lower lip, then pulling back with a giggle. "Was that okay?"

"Yeah," Carlos said, blushing again and biting at his lip, "that was better than okay."

"Neat. We should do it again, then, while we've got the chance," Cecil replied, going in for another kiss already, which Carlos gladly returned, deepening it slightly, and, without thinking, letting go of the countertop to pull Cecil closer, sending them both off balance.

Carlos found himself Cecil-less and scrambling for the cabinet handle to stop himself from smacking into it, while Cecil ended up tumbling over the kitchen island and back into stronger gravity, pulling him down to the floor with a thud and a yelp.

"Cecil! Cecil, are you okay!?" Carlos said quickly, scrambling to get to normal gravity and check on his boyfriend, who was sitting upright on the floor and rubbing his lower back but otherwise looked none the worse for the wear.

"That was... not neat," Cecil replied after a moment, looking up at Carlos who quickly sank to his knees to be at eye level and run his hands over Cecil, checking to make sure he was intact, "but there's no harm done. Are you okay?"

Once Carlos was sufficiently convinced that Cecil was not injured in any serious fashion, he nodded in reply. "I'm sorry about that," he murmured, pressing quick, worried kisses to Cecil's face before he let his lips be captured by the broadcaster's.

The kiss deepened on it's own, as if their personal gravitational pulls were stronger than normal. Carlos wouldn't discount that possibility, but he had no interest in attempting to break the kiss to find out.

Cecil was the one who eventually pulled back, panting lightly to catch his breath and smiling broadly at Carlos.

"You know, I think just kissing like this is good too," Carlos said softly as he reluctantly stood and pulled Cecil up with him, going to sit on the couch.

Cecil nodded, standing with Carlos but not joining him in sitting just yet. "It's very good," he assured as he walked behind the couch and leaned over it, looking at Carlos upside down once again, "but that doesn't mean we still can't do this..."

Carlos once again found Cecil's lips pressed against his own with Cecil upside down in front of him, and while part of him wanted to sink into the couch in embarrassment, he opted to just smile and return the kiss softly before Cecil pulled back.

"Was that okay?" Cecil asked again, noting the return of the color in Carlos's cheeks with a grin.

The scientist laughed, turning in his seat and tugging at Cecil until they were facing each other properly once more and leaning their foreheads together before answering simply, "Perfect."

**Author's Note:**

> There are a handful of Cecil/Carlos fan arts wherein Cecil is floating and/or Spider-Man kissing Carlos and I love them all (and I also have about 55,000 likes on tumblr so of course I can never find any of them to link for reference.
> 
> Reference for the definition of the second found here: http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/second.html


End file.
